Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Canada's finally done it! POT IS LEGAL in Canada now… “A judge in Windsor, Ont., has ruled that Canada's law on possession of small amounts of marijuana is no longer valid” … “there is effectively no law in Canada prohibiting the possession of 30 grams of marijuana or less.” (It's not totally a done-deal, but it basically is.)

So far this morning I've added a pile of stories to the newsfeed (I liked this article on alternative-look modeling, and this one on hockey scars). I'm also linking stories that include brief anecdotes about tattoos, like this one about Matthew Kelly getting a matching tattoo with his kids to mark his 50th birthday. I figure that even though those stories aren't directly essential (and more often the mention is brief), but I figure they might be of use for people writing papers and so on. And some of the stories are just plain weird.

I also submitted my list of nominations for Modified Mind's year-end award update (and yes, it's where I got the idea for the newsfeed, although it was I think NORML that finally convinced me)… Felt like a bit of an ass since I nominated myself for many of the categories, but I don't think I could say with a straight face that there's a better body modification site than BME — and when I say that, please realize that I'm not tooting my own horn, I'm tooting your horn!

Last night I had the bright idea that I'd take off my splint to “see how things were doing” (and because it was itchy). Wow did that feel freaky… It didn't take long to clue in that it wasn't the right thing to be doing, and I'm all secure again now.

Finally, some relvant news links of a non-body modification sort:

• What makes North Koreans tick? Why would a nation support its government in developing weapons of mass destruction? Simple: because they don't want to be dominated by the US. There are two ways to fight a superpower like America — WMDs and terrorism. North Korea has chosen the first. (Another link on this subject).
• Afghanistan: the nuclear nightmare starts. As you may or may not know, the US used “dirty nukes” in Afghanistan on civilian centres (and did the same in Iraq in the first Gulf War). Kabul (population 3.5 million) and Jalalabad subjects showed uranium concentrations higher than has ever been seen in a civilian population. Who's evil?
• US takes first step in banning international travel by its citizens. You decide if it's a first step or simply another privacy-invading bad move on the government's part… But have you ever seen any government action of this type that isn't a step to somewhere?
• Totalitarianism nears: Without protest, Americans are giving up freedom. Like it or not, modern day America is the new NAZI Germany, but worse… The question is, is it too late to change that? I quote:
  

  In NAZI Germany at this time of year, people freely shopped in large department stores for gifts for family and friends. The streets were full of traffic. It was "business as usual" for most of the citizens. While in the colonial states conquered by the Nazis, and in the concentrations camps for Jews, gays and communists, life was a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations.

• Lies about Iraq. The biggest lie, the one that started it all, is that a giant Iraqi army had invaded Kuwait.